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Feeding Behavior

So, let's talk about their feeding behavior and we will dispel some myths that you think about goats.

They are insistent that the diet is fresh, clean and previously untouched. Now if you keep the feed out there out there for weeks upon end without any giving them any fresh, eventually they have to eat it, right, or they’ll die. But, they would prefer to be fed fresh feed daily or be offered fresh feed and for refusals to be cleaned daily also. They have the ability to discriminate or choose among plant fractions that appear to be very similar and this is because they have very mobile lips that allow sorting, so you end up with a very diverse diet selection. So the best example would be offering goats a TMR like we would cows at the dairy. How well can cows choose and sort? A little bit, they’ll nose around in the feed and pick out some things that they think is good, but their selection isn’t very extensive. So, how mobile are goat’s lips? Pretty good, right? So they can pick and choose and sort through feeds. The result is that they select a very diverse diet. There are two important effects of their feeding behavior. Usually the diet consumed differs from that offered. If you offer a cow or a group of cows a TMR, you’re pretty assured that what they consume is what you gave them. With goats, what you give them and what they consume is quite different. Also, goats will eat more if they had more of a selection. So, if you offer them a variety of feedstuffs they will consume more than if you just offered them one or two feedstuffs.

So, this is a feeding value of alfalfa hay.

And this is what was offered, in stems and leaves. So, these researchers plucked off all of the leaves off alfalfa hay, weighed how much leaves are worth, how much stems are worth, so they got a percent. And so it was almost 50/50 leaves and stems. So, if you fed this to a cow, she would do some sorting too, but what she consumed and what was offered would be very similar. Notice what the goats refused. They refused mainly what? Mainly the stems. So they consumed mainly the leaves. And so they ingested many leaves, or about 60% percent leaves and about 41% stems.

This is the energy concentration and the protein concentration of what was offered. So, this would be you go out, you core some bales of hay, send it to a lab, this is what comes back. So this is what was refused, and so what was refused was low in energy, low in protein and this is actually what the goats consumed. So, what they consumed was very high in energy and higher in protein compared to the overall hay.

Goats grazing will have this very characteristic browse line. So, I’ve never seen very many goats grazing except in Texas. But if you drive through or walk through where goats have been grazing there is a browse line, it is about four to six feet and everything below that is almost devoid of vegetation. Of course the grass is, they can reach it right? But they will stand on their hind legs and they’ll browse trees or shrubs and so everything from about six feet or four feet down is almost totally devoid of vegetation. They are particularly attracted to trees and shrubs. And people I think exploited this to their advantage especially in California, for power line right a ways. So bringing goats in to keep these clean. Also, bringing goats in to prevent fire, so grazing down all of the vegetation. You can use them to control undesirable species. The meat goats, especially the Boer goats from South Africa, are very effective at keeping right of ways clear or grazing, browsing undesirable vegetation.

So, to reiterate, the nutritional value of a goat's selected diet is generally higher than the average value of the vegetation. So, remember back to the alfalfa hay example What they consume is higher in energy and higher in protein than the average value of the hay. The more complex the available vegetation or the more selection that they have, the more complex that the diet will be. Okay, but if you put them out on pasture and it was newly seeded ryegrass, what’s the specie in the pasture? So, they have one specie to choose from and so that’s all that they eat. And so generally on pasture or on range with no plant diversity, the diet selected by goats will be the same as the diet selected by sheep and cattle.

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